Page:'Twixt land and sea - tales (IA twixtlandseatale00conr).pdf/70

 “You spoke to your brother about it?” I was distinctly awed. “And for me? Because he must have known that my ship’s the only one hung up for bags. How on earth”

He wiped his brow again. I noticed that he was dressed with unusual care, in clothes in which I had never seen him before. He avoided my eye.

“You’ve heard people talk, of course. That’s true enough. He I  We certainly  for several years” His voice declined to a mere sleepy murmur. “You see I had something to tell him of, something which”

His murmur stopped. He was not going to tell me what this something was. And I didn’t care. Anxious to carry the news to my charterers, I ran back on the verandah to get my hat.

At the bustle I made the girl turned her eyes slowly in my direction, and even the old woman was checked in her knitting. I stopped a moment to exclaim excitedly:

“Your father’s a brick, Miss Don’t Care. That’s what he is.”

She beheld my elation in scornful surprise. Jacobus with unwonted familiarity seized my arm as I flew through the dining-room, and breathed heavily at me a proposal about “A plate of soup” that evening. I answered distractedly: “Eh? What? Oh, thanks! Certainly. With pleasure,” and tore myself away. Dine with him? Of course. The merest gratitude

But some three hours afterwards, in the dusky, silent street, paved with cobble-stones, I became